1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a device for loading a fragmenting machine, for example, a hammer crusher, which includes several rollers supported in a frame of the machine for feeding recyclable, preferably different types of metallic scrap material, such as bodies of discarded passenger vehicles and/or bundled scrap metal.
2. Description of the Related Art
Such devices are known from DE 197 08 185 A1 and include an upper drive roller and a lower roller. A press cover is connected to the upper drive roller which pre-presses the metallic scrap material before the pre-pressed scrap material is captured by the lower drive roller. This operative connection between the press cover and the top or drive roller has disadvantages. On one hand, the upper drive roller is difficult to handle and, on the other hand, is lifted during the pressing process as a result of the established connection with the press cover. As a result, the scrap material passing over the upper drive roller can reach the fragmenting machine in an uncontrolled manner. It is therefore difficult to meter the quantities loaded into the fragmenting machine.
Although other conventional systems, such as draw-in chains, press the material better than a single upper drive roller, they hold the material along their entire length. Disadvantageously, an arrangement with dual upper rollers with a common drive located in a frame has not only an increased mass compared to a single roller, but the dual upper rollers, once they are lifted, immediately release the scrap material, which defeats their intended function.
It is therefore an object of the invention to obviate these disadvantages so as to feed the scrap material in a continuous, pre-pressed and controllable manner, which can be easily managed. The present invention proposes to provide both a front upper drive roller and a rear upper drive roller, which have independent drives adapted to drive the drive rollers with identical or with only slightly different peripheral velocities. The drive rollers can rotate both forward and backward. The rear drive roller can be moved in an upward and downward direction over a certain range independent of the front drive roller. After the rear drive roller has been raised by a certain distance, the front drive roller is automatically raised and thereby xe2x80x9cdancesxe2x80x9d on the material. The height of the front and rear drive rollers can be independently adjusted. The front drive roller can optionally be held in any suitable position. The front drive roller has a predetermined unobstructed passage relative to the feed plane. The rear drive roller then drops into a lower position. The downward motion of the front drive roller is interrupted when a minimum distance to the rear drive is reached. The rear drive roller can initiate additional pressing operations induced by hydraulic cylinders. The front drive roller is constructed so that it can also induce a pressing operation. Both pressing operations can be induced independent of each other. With this arrangement, even bulky scrap material can be controllably fed through manual or automatic control.